Eulogy for Russell Wiggins

C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity bemoans the "spiritualizing" of certain descriptive words. The word he uses as an example is "gentleman," which, he rightly points out, used to simply designate that a person was a member of nobility. By using it to mean someone who is courteous, we erode the original meaning and use it when we have other words that mean the same thing. Here I must differ with the man whose books have shaped my faith and writings. Lewis lived in a country that still has titled aristocrats. We do not. And I for one cannot think of Russell Wiggins without the word "gentleman" immediately coming to mind.

Russell was a gentle man, the embodiment of courtesy and graciousness. He seemed to always be smiling but never in an obsequious or phony way. He seemed to be genuinely happy to meet and talk to anyone. He was always ready to be helpful. And he was always grateful for any help offered to him. And yet he was not wishy washy or mealy mouthed. He was honest and firm in his convictions. I loved talking to him. I can hear his voice in my head even now, with his almost Southern speech pattern and yet the clear diction and plumy tones that must have echoed his English mother.

Russell was that rare creature, the Floridian who was actually born in Florida. He was born in Tampa and raised in Miami. And his beloved wife Margaret was raised there, too, though they were kept apart by such coincidences that one suspects God loves romantic comedies. Margaret was born in Ohio but came to Miami when she was one. For a long time, Russell and Margaret lived in the same area and knew the same people but never met each other. In high school, Russell worked at a market where he would from time to time scoop tub butter for a woman who turned out to be Margaret's mother. The gas station he later worked for was patronized by Margaret's father. But he didn't meet Margaret. Then he went to war.

A year after graduating from Edison Senior High, Russell went into the Naval Reserve. In May of 1941 he was called to active duty. He went into the aviation mechanic school and graduated on December 5, 1941. His first assignment was Pearl Harbor and his fellow graduates were jealous.

2 days later, his dream assignment in Hawaii did not seem like such a good gig. He arrived after the Japanese attack and his first assignment was to walk the beaches looking for body parts. He was assigned to the PBY Patrol Squadron. He flew patrol from Pearl Harbor, the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands. Russell participated in the Solomon Islands campaign and the Battle of Santa Cruz. Russell was proud of his service to his country.

After 6 years in the service, he returned to Miami and to work as an auto mechanic. His employer had moved the garage but Margaret's father was still a loyal customer. And Margaret and Russell continued to just miss each other. She regularly caught a bus near his garage but about an hour before Russell went to work. She played tennis nearby but always earlier than Russell would have gone by.

Russell did see Margaret at last but she had her son Lloyd with her. Russell assumed she was waiting for her husband to come home from the war. But Lloyd's father had given his life at Normandy. When Russell found this out, he bought a couple of tickets to a March of Dimes dance and approached Margaret. She at first thought he was trying to sell her tickets to the dance and she protested that she didn't have the money and didn't have a date to take with her. Finally, she realized Russell was asking for a date with her and she said "Yes."

At the dance, Russell and Margaret realized as they talked about the other people in their lives that they had a lot of them in common. They shared stories about folks only to find the other person knew the people in the story. It was as if they had known each other all their lives, but not quite. After 2 weeks, Russell asked Margaret to marry him and she said "Yes." The engagement would have been as short as the courtship had the church not made them wait till the end of Lent.

Russell said their marriage was a "we" marriage rather than an "I" marriage. When he worked nights, Margaret would keep things quiet during the day. Then the whole family would eat at 4 pm (breakfast for Russell, dinner for the rest of the family) and Margaret would do the cleaning and vacuuming while he was at work. Russell in turn would make a mental note whenever Margaret liked a dress but wouldn't buy it because of the expense. He'd go back later, buy the dress and hang it in her closet. The next time Margaret was wondering what to wear, he'd tell her to look deeper in her closet.

Russell was a good father to Lloyd, Judy and Steve, a good grandfather to 10 children, a good great grandfather to 24 more and a good great great grandfather to yet another 4.

Another person Russell loved was God, whom he served during his 30 years as a member of the Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park. He was on the vestry there and served as Senior Warden. When he retired from Bell South after 30 years, having worked his way up from auto mechanic to M.V. Equipment Supervisor, he and Margaret moved to the Keys. Here the Very Rev. Blount Grant asked the couple to contact Bob and Elaine Nichols on Big Pine to find a place to put an Episcopal mission. The as yet unnamed mission held its first service at 5 pm on All Saints Day 1981 in the parish hall of St. Peter's Roman Catholic church. In 1982 Fr. Grant appointed Russell and Margaret as delegates for the mission to the Diocesan Convention. St. Francis-in-the-Keys was recognized and Russell was appointed its first Senior Warden. The next step was to actually build a church.

Russell was on the building committee, turned over a shovel of dirt at the site of our altar at the ground breaking in 1983, and with many other founding members, personally helped clear the land and literally built our church. The first service held on this site was Easter 1986, where a sunrise service was celebrated under the sky between its partially built walls. On December 4, 1986 the completed church was dedicated by Bishop Schofield. The base of the original altar was made by Russell, as was the base of our unique clamshell baptismal font, our Pascal candleholder, our torches, our aumbry, and our presence light stand. A practical man, Russell gave his spiritual faith physical expression in the things he made for the church he built.

But he did not merely shape the physical form of St. Francis. He had a hand in its ongoing worship. When the Very Rev. Lynn Jones was called to another church, she expressed her desire that both her parishes, St. Columba and St. Francis, get their own priests. We could not afford a full-time priest and figured we would still be yoked with St. Columba and whoever they hired. It was Russell who suggested that I be asked to become St. Francis' first Rector. Well, Russell, you did it. You completed the altar set.

I was not even a twinkle in my father's eye when Russell fought in,  ironically, the same part of the same theater of war where my father did. I know from my dad a little of the hell that they faced in that great struggle. But I saw Russell face a struggle few men have the guts to tackle. I refer to his beloved wife Margaret's final illness. As her disease robbed her of recent memories and sent her back in time, Russell stayed by her side, personally taking care of her, even after she forgot who he was. As a home health nurse, I have to tell you that is rare. We men like problems we can fix and fix fast. Few men have the stamina and courage to face chronic degenerative disease, even in a loved one. But Russell stayed with her and nursed her to the end. And I never heard him complain or bemoan his plight.

Years later, as his own health worsened, his visits to church became less frequent and I brought him communion and my wife's home cooked meals. We talked at his dining room table and he never lost his optimism or his enthusiasm. I enjoyed the visits and he did too. I did worry about him being alone but took some comfort in the fact that his friends and neighbors also visited and watched over him, dropping by several times a day. What kind of man makes friends that loyal?

When Russell needed around-the-clock care, his daughter Judy and her husband Carl took him into their home and stuck with him with the same faithfulness that he had demonstrated in taking care of Margaret. Still it was hard on everyone, and Russell's last months were, to put it mildly, unpleasant. And as someone who loved this man, it seems to me like it would be a pretty bad ending for the life of a very good man.

And it would be. If it were an ending. But thank God, it is not. The God Russell put his faith in doesn't like unhappy endings. He took the worse ending a life could have--that his son gets killed by the people he came to save--and turns it into the best ending possible: eternal life for all who will take it. God is a God for whom nothing is impossible. He is a God of the living and not the dead, as Jesus reminds us. He is a God who promises us, as does the proprietor in the movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, that everything will be all right in the end. If it's not all right, it's because it's not yet the end. That's a pretty good summation of our Christian hope.

The end of this life is like the horizon. We can't see past it. But the person whose ship has dipped below the horizon has not ceased to exist. He is just beyond the limits of our perception. His departure, however sad it is for us, is the beginning of a new and glorious adventure for him. We will not see him for a while. And so we mourn. But he is in the best hands possible. And for that we rejoice.

And the voyage is ultimately a voyage home, a voyage to be with our loved ones forever. We will meet again. As our heavenly Father resurrected his son from the dead, so he will resurrect us all. As will he resurrect this battered and suffering world. He will restore it to what he created it to be: paradise. And he will restore us to what he created us to be: his children, created in his image, reflecting that image clearly once more, the image of the God who is love. That means for some of us, God has his work cut out for him. But I don't suspect he needs to do much work on Russell. Or Margaret. They embodied Christ's love in this life. And they will dazzle us with it in the next